


Gave No Token

by charmquark



Series: Edgar Allan Poe challenge [3]
Category: Naruto.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmquark/pseuds/charmquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Leave her be. Let her grow on her own.</i> Sakura was better off without his interference. ( KakaSaku )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gave No Token

**Author's Note:**

> (Written 01/2011) Written for [](http://kakasaku.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://kakasaku.livejournal.com/)**kakasaku** 's Edgar Allen Poe contest, week 3 - "Only this and nothing more."

Kakashi wasn’t quite asleep when he heard the glass panel in the window to his bedroom rattle as it was opened, shivering against a loose frame. He hadn’t gotten it fixed in years, and that night his deliberate neglect served its purpose as a simple, effective alarm against intruders.

Granted, the figure that slid into his bedroom in an otherwise silent manner wasn’t exactly the sort he’d intended to alert himself against, but he appreciated the warning just the same.

He knew his unplanned visitor wasn’t Akatsuki, or a missing-nin with a grudge. He knew it because he recognized the silhouette backlit by the waning moon, felt it in his gut reaction to that shape. A missing-nin, after all, wouldn’t have weighed his chest down with exhaustion the way _she_ did.

* * *

It was a cold, early winter day on the way back from a two-man mission when Kakashi discovered that Sakura would never become someone who was beautiful when she cried. She never had been when she was younger, but he didn’t have much opportunity to check that it was still true.

His heart leapt up to a panicked, adrenaline-fueled pace when he discovered her on her knees with her blood rusting the ground around her. Cold dread burned his arteries; his heart rate settled back to normal only when he noticed that the wound her hand was pressed to wouldn’t have hit anything vital. Like a good medic, she had already begun healing it, though her body quaked and shook with silent sobs.

Tears made some women pretty; they made Sakura flushed and her eyes bloodshot and puffy, her lips chapped from where she’s bitten them in a failed attempt to hold herself together.

“What happened?” he asked, because this was a girl who had nearly died on Sasori's sword when she was 15 and hadn’t cried until Chiyo had given her life to Gaara. He knew physical pain couldn’t crack her.

Several shuddering breaths failed to give her the voice to respond; when she finally could, she spoke a single name and it was all Kakashi needed to hear.

* * *

They were five hours out from Konoha, but he found an inn with a room to spare and left her in it so that she could have some privacy, or perhaps so that he could escape her grief.

Kakashi had never been good with her, had never known what to do for her or how to help her; that had been true when she was younger, too. In many ways he was unsuited to teach her, and had made peace with the fact that abandoning her, while perhaps cruel, had been the best thing he could do for her. Under Tsunade’s tutelage, she flourished in the scorched earth Sasuke left in his wake. Sakura bloomed in the ashes, and Kakashi was content to merely watch as she did. She passed from girl to teenager to devastating and competent young woman and he remained a spectator, because things were better that way.

He watched the way he watched most things: outwardly careless, inwardly keen. It was a misdirection he’d learned in battle that served him just as well in interpersonal relationships. It would have been nearly as lethal to show all his cards to an opponent as it would be to give Sakura a hint of the depth of his growing admiration, after all. Tsunade had taught her how to make each strike count; no one got fresh with her without her consent.

So all he did — all he would ever do — was watch, even as she made time out of her busy schedule to try to pester him into all number of social situations; some benign, some positively bold, all rebuffed. Even as his dreams became unfamiliar to him, the sharpness of her and something he couldn’t define cutting through the bloodshed he was used to seeing in them. His mind could be at liberty all it liked, but he wouldn’t give his hands that freedom.

Leave her be. Let her grow on her own.

Dreams, of course, would never be equal to reality. It was easier to find a definition for that thing when he returned to the room and was treated to a view of bare shoulders and wet hair. _Want,_ the tightening in his stomach supplied. _Have, hold, do more than watch,_ it continued.

Sakura was fresh from a shower and hadn’t bothered to get dressed before sitting on the end of the bed. He was helpless and she was vulnerable there in only a towel; he couldn’t help but admire the way water slid down her pale spine.

She turned to look at him, and it was like a punch in the gut. It turned out that her sorrow took time to resolve itself into beauty, and when it did it was as deadly as a knife to his resolve.

* * *

It wasn’t a question of _if_ she would turn up, but _when._

Kakashi had only himself to blame for that. He had been expecting a visit from her ever since a cold, early winter night when she was too much of a temptation and his sense flew him long enough to give in to the urge learn her, to explore and exploit her.

He couldn’t speak for her sense but he knew it must have gone _somewhere_ for her to allow it, for her to protest when he realized what he was doing and to whom he was doing it and pulled his hand away from her before he could see how pretty she’d look when orgasm broke her. The way she whimpered and gripped his wrist to try and prevent him from stopping damn near broke _him._

Now she stood silent in his room with her arms crossed and her eyes bright and stubborn and silently demanding an answer with the angle of her mouth, and Kakashi didn’t know how to explain to her that she was better off with him as an observer, nothing more.


End file.
